Welcome back to Day 2 of our trip report, covering 30th December 2019!
If you haven’t read Part 1 of this series, make sure to check it out first here:
Related Post: Disneyland Paris Trip Report – December 2019 – Day 1
Extra Magic Time
On Day 2, we spent our Extra Magic Time at the Walt Disney Studios Park.
We went straight to Guest Services to reserve our Mastercard tickets for Mickey’s Christmas Big Band.
Fun Tip: If you have a Mastercard (we use our Monzo cards) you can reserve tickets for shows in the Animagique Theatre. Mastercard tickets give you priority seating and you don’t have arrive 30 minutes beforehand like other guests!
Tickets reserved, we power-walked to Crushes Coaster. Extra Magic Time is the best time to ride Crush, because it’s the most popular ride in the Studios and you can’t get a Fast Pass for it.
Luck was on our side this morning, we managed to blitz four more rides in the first 2 hours: Tower of Terror, RC Racer, Ratatouille and Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin.
Fun Tip: Ratatouille is another really popular ride but it offers the Single Rider option. Amy and I don’t mind sitting separately if it means a shorter wait time! We both managed to get on the ride after a 5 minute wait, but the regular queue was 45 minutes!
Official Park Opening until Lunchtime
Once Extra Magic Time was over, we went for breakfast at Restaurant En Coulisse, which is inside the Studio 1 building. We got a Pain au Chocolat, a bread roll, orange juice and two coffees for €13.65 (including Annual Pass discount) which was decent and kept us ticking over for a few hours.
While we were getting breakfast, I managed to get us a Lineberty slot to meet Pluto. It was a really good meet, Pluto is very mischievous and loves messing around. He loved our spirit jerseys and he was very excited to spot himself on the front!
Then it was time for another ride on Tower of Terror (can you tell that we love this ride?!) as we had lifted a Fast Pass as we came off it earlier in the day.
Our next stop was Stitch Live. Stitch is Amy’s favourite character so it’s a big priority when we’re in the Studios. This show is really interactive and it’s just as funny for adults as it is for children. It’s only about 20 minutes long but it’s a nice break when you’ve been running about all morning.
Then we decided to park-hop over to the Disneyland Park to see what was happening over there. BIG MISTAKE. The park was absolutely heaving – we had a quick walk around, got completely overwhelmed by the crowds and made a beeline for Casey’s Corner to get some lunch and plan our next move.
Casey’s Corner was a total disaster. We stood in line for 30 minutes and the line DID NOT MOVE the whole time. Disneyland Paris has such a bad restaurant problem, it’s crazy. It was the busiest week of the year and there were some restaurants and snack stops closed and the queues for the ones that were open were insane. After standing for half an hour and getting nowhere, we decided to go back to Walt Disney Studios to source some food.
We ended up going to a food cart and getting hot dogs. They weren’t the best thing we’ve ever eaten at the parks but we didn’t even care, we were so hungry! Then I spotted the Studio Catering Company cart in the Front Lot.
I’ve tried to get a Mickey Waffle every single time I’ve been to the parks but all the places that sold them seemed to be closed (see above re: restaurant closures *eyeroll*). It was a case of third time lucky, because I finally got one!
They’re made fresh as you wait and I got Nutella and sugar on mine. I’ve never had a bad dessert at Disneyland Paris, they do sweet food SO well, but this was by far my favourite.
Afternoon Adventures
We then headed over to the newly opened Animation Celebration building to take an Animation Class. This was a brand new experience for both of us and we ended up really enjoying it. A lovely cast member named Arthur taught us how to draw Mushu from Mulan. I don’t think we did too badly in the end! We will definitely go back and do another Animation Class when we’re in the parks in March.
After we finished drawing, it was finally time for Mickey’s Christmas Big Band in the Animagique Theatre. We saw this show in November 2019 and it’s really brilliant. The cast are so talented and we were dying to see it one last time before it closed. It’s the perfect mix of professional performers and classic characters. Stand out moments for me were Minnie’s performance of “I Love A Piano” (she’s SO extra!) and Mickey’s amazing drum solo. Is there anything he can’t do?!
When we left the Animagique Theatre, the crowd levels were just crazy so we ditched the parks altogether and went to World of Disney in the Disney Village to do some shopping. I didn’t actually buy much on this trip as we only had hand luggage suitcases (but a mini haul is coming!) Saying that, it’s always nice to have a walk around World of Disney.
I don’t know who we think we are or how we manage to afford this, but we went back to Café Fantasia in the Disneyland Hotel to warm up and again, escape the crowds. My parents bought me a Disney trivia game for Christmas so we played that for a while until it was time for our next adventure.
Evening Adventures
We then headed back into Walt Disney Studios for my favourite show EVER in the Disney parks, Surprise Mickey. We always go to the evening showing (even though it’s on a few times a day) because the last show has fireworks and projections against the Tower of Terror. It’s basically just a massive dance party featuring Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Pluto and Goofy. The songs are SO catchy and you can’t help but smile the whole way through. I’ll be so disappointed if they don’t bring this show back soon!
Our final stop for the night was probably the highlight of the whole trip, dinner at Café Mickey. I had booked this as part of Amy’s Christmas present. Café Mickey is a character dining experience, so you get a three course meal and Disney characters come round the tables so you can meet them, take photographs, get autographs etc. We met Mickey, Minnie, Pluto (again! But it’s ok – we love him!), Tigger and Eeyore.
I don’t want to go into too much detail about Café Mickey in this post because it’s worthy of a full review of its own, which will be posted once this trip report series is finished. I will say that we were very impressed with the food and service, and the character interaction was fantastic.
I’m so glad that we had Cafe Mickey booked because due to the parks being so busy, we hadn’t managed to meet anywhere near as many characters as we usually do. And I was NOT leaving the resort until I had met my favourites, Mickey and Minnie.
After Café Mickey, we got a taxi back to our hotel in Torcy. Ridiculously expensive, but there was nothing we could do about it as the trains were on strike! C’est la vie!
Make sure you stay tuned for the 3rd and final part of this trip report series!